Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/100

99 past, or tried for some capital offence, and show what class of society they were from, how they wore bred, what influences were about them in childhood, how they passed their Sundays, and also describe the configuration of their bodies, it would help us to a valuable chapter in the philosophy of crime, and furnish mighty argument against the injustice of our mode of dealing with offenders.

Poverty is the dark side of modern society. I say modern society, though poverty is not modern, for ancient society had poverty worse than ours, and a side still darker yet. Cannibalism, butchery of captives after battle, frequent or continual wars for the sake of plunder, and the very of the weak—these were the dark side of society in four great periods of human history,—the savage, tho barbarous, the elastic, and tho feudal. Poverty is the best of these five bad things, each of which, however, has grimly done its service in its day.

There is no poverty among the Gaboon negroes. Put them in our latitude, and it soon comes. Nay, as they get to learn the wants of cultivated men, there will be a poorer class even in the torrid zone. Poverty prevails in every civilized nation on earth; yes, in every savage option in austere climes. Let us look at some examples. England is the richest country in Europe. I mean she has more wealth, in proportion to her population than any other in a similar climate. Look at her possessions in every corner of the globe; at her armies, which Europe cannot conquer; at her ships, which weave the great commercial web that spreads all round about the world; at home what factories, what farms, what houses, what towns, what a vast and wealthy metropolis; what an aristocracy—so rich, so cultivated, so able, so daring, and so "on conquered.

But in that very English nation the most frightful poverty exists. Look at the two sister islands: this the queen, and that the beggar of all nations; the rose and the shamrock ; the one throned in royal beauty, the other bowed to the dust, torn, and trampled under foot. In that capital of the world's wealth, in that centre of power far greater than the power of all the Caesars, there is the most squalid poverty. Look at St. Giles's and St. James's—that the earthly hell of want and crime, this the worldly heaven